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The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers

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Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers

#41

Post by mkl »

avian wrote: post #36
WalterBright wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of being on the moon is having it as a massive manufacturing place for building things to move outward in the solar system. Lifting things out of the earth's gravity well is just too expensive. Compare the size of the Saturn 5 rocket to get to the moon with the size of the rocket needed to come back. I do not see the challenges of building a habitat on the moon that much different from Mars. You have (ess…

> Compare the size of the Saturn 5 rocket to get to the moon with the size of the rocket needed to come back. That is not fair comparisson. Saturn V needed to also lift the rocket that came back.

So did the rocket that came back. Quite a bit of mass did get left behind though.

Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers

#42

Post by wiz21c »

olivaw_daneel wrote: post #30
WalterBright wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> shipping factories The idea is to ship the factories that build the factories that build the factories that build the factories that can build large ships in large quantities.

If only life were an RTS game :) If we are talking about taking advantage of resources not available on Earth, the untold riches of the Asteroid Belt are eminently more accessible from Mars.

What resources are we missing on earth ? I mean resources that we miss because they're in too low quantities for useful applications (not resources that are scarce and useless or resources whose scarcity is the result of politics)

Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers

#43

Post by curtis »

WalterBright wrote: post #26
curtis wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mars has some stuff that the Moon doesn't: volatiles. According to Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volatiles ): In planetary science, volatiles are the group of chemical elements and chemical compounds with low boiling points that are associated with a planet's or moon's crust or atmosphere. Examples include nitrogen, water, carbon dioxide, ammonia, hydrogen, methane and sulfur dioxide. Of these the only on…

> adds a lot of difficulty and risk That's a vast understatement. Don't forget expense and time! Orders of magnitude more. I don't think there's any realistic way of getting a sustainable base on Mars without doing it first on the moon. On the moon you can learn from mistakes. On Mars you die from the first mistake.

Mars will be a dangerous environment, but it won't be as dangerous as the moon. For example, if your Mars base is set up near the polar cap or near easily mineable permafrost, then a major atmospheric loss can be replaced by combining oxygen cracked from the ice using electrolysis and nitrogen sourced from the martian atmosphere. It is unlikely that a moonbase would have a similar option.

The martian atmosphere may not provide a lot of radiation protection but it provides way more than you get on the moon. And again, if you've got access to ice, you can use it to fairly easily create radiation shielding for your base.

It could be a situation where difficulty of receiving aid from Earth is offset by a lower risk of things going catastrophically wrong.

That said, if I was planning a mission to Mars, I would want extensive redundancy throughout all of my systems. One thing to keep in mind, a modern Mars mission does not need to be mass-limited in the same way that the Apollo missions were. SpaceX has already greatly reduced the cost of putting mass in orbit, and if Blue Origin can actually make New Glenn work, then you are looking at a substantial reduction from SpaceX's current cost-to-orbit.

Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers

#44

Post by baq »

andyfal12 wrote: post #33
WalterBright wrote: post #12

The foreseeable future for man in space is the moon, not Mars. The moon is close - orders of magnitude easier to get there and back again. Its gravity well isn't a prison. You can probably launch stuff from there to earth with a linear accelerator. It's full of natural resources that can be used to build colonies and space ships. There's no environment to degrade. Mars doesn't make any sense. The moon does. And besid…

100 percent agree. The most logical plan I heard was the following: Solar power works way better, and potentially nonstop at the poles of the moon. Use that energy to cook moonrock into building materials and lauch it all into orbit on an electromagnetic mass driver. Then design and build Oniell cylinders, once we have rigorous tests of artificial gravity on humans. If you want a Mars base after the fact, go for it.…

> The most logical plan I heard was the following: Solar power works way better, and potentially nonstop at the poles of the moon.

the problem is, unless you're at the pole, you have 2 weeks of power followed by 2 weeks of pitch black darkness, so you have to have a lot of batteries or the station isn't livable 50% of the time.

Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers

#45

Post by hutzlibu »

WalterBright wrote: post #39
hutzlibu wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah ... I doubt it would work and be worth the effort and I doubt we should do that, before we explored mars for indiginous life first! ("probably terran!" ... reference to the the mars chronicle from K.S.Robinson)

> before we explored mars for indiginous life first! We already have. It's a liveless rock. How much more do we keep moving the goal posts and beating that dead horse?

Maybe until we explored a bit more, than a few areas on the surface? Mars is HUGE.

Potential areas for life might be in vulcanic areas underground.

Might not be a high chance, granted. But the chances that anything from your project survives are far lower - but it would definitely damage research on current or historic life on mars a lot.

Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers

#46

Post by isostatic »

WalterBright wrote: post #39
hutzlibu wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah ... I doubt it would work and be worth the effort and I doubt we should do that, before we explored mars for indiginous life first! ("probably terran!" ... reference to the the mars chronicle from K.S.Robinson)

> before we explored mars for indiginous life first! We already have. It's a liveless rock. How much more do we keep moving the goal posts and beating that dead horse?

I remember an SG1 episode, they turned up on a planet which was a frozen wasteland for as far as the eye could see, no evidence of any life later than microbes.

Turns out the planet was earth - they were in Antarctica.

Clearly not comparable, but there's a big difference between salt flats in Namibia or the seater in Antarctica and landing in downtown manhattan or the Brazilian rainforest.

We've successfully sent half a dozen probes to mars, we've barely scratched the surface.

Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers

#47

Post by isostatic »

swatkat wrote: post #6

I have great hopes on Team Indus. Hoping they'll pull of this mission. They've signed a PSLV-XL launch contract with ISRO, and they seem to be on track with spacecraft and rover development[0]. Japan's X-prize entrant HAKUTO will also be ride-sharing on this mission[1]. It'll be an exciting 2018 for us, we have two moon rover missions from India - Chandrayaan 2 from ISRO[2], and Team Indus. [0] https://medium.com/tea…

"we have two moon rover missions from India"

How can India justify a moon mission when you can barely walk round Delhi with tripping over homeless children?

Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers

#48

Post by airza »

olivaw_daneel wrote: post #30
WalterBright wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> shipping factories The idea is to ship the factories that build the factories that build the factories that build the factories that can build large ships in large quantities.

If only life were an RTS game :) If we are talking about taking advantage of resources not available on Earth, the untold riches of the Asteroid Belt are eminently more accessible from Mars.

I'm not sure how true that is, gravity wells being what they are

Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers

#49

Post by ginko »

wiz21c wrote: post #42
olivaw_daneel wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only life were an RTS game :) If we are talking about taking advantage of resources not available on Earth, the untold riches of the Asteroid Belt are eminently more accessible from Mars.

What resources are we missing on earth ? I mean resources that we miss because they're in too low quantities for useful applications (not resources that are scarce and useless or resources whose scarcity is the result of politics)

One element I can think of would be platinum. It's high price is one of the reasons why fuel cells aren't cost effective at the moment.

Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers

#50

Post by jacobush »

ginko wrote: post #49
wiz21c wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What resources are we missing on earth ? I mean resources that we miss because they're in too low quantities for useful applications (not resources that are scarce and useless or resources whose scarcity is the result of politics)

One element I can think of would be platinum. It's high price is one of the reasons why fuel cells aren't cost effective at the moment.

Gold for radiation shielding?
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